The process of voting any and all bums out
of office should they prove unfit for the high honor of governance is a
staple of American democracy — just like the various pieces of
legislation that eventually allowed women and minorities to participate
in the voting process.

Yet nearly 50 years after the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 finally overturned Jim Crow laws and allowed black
people to vote, the fight over voting rights rages on, especially in
swing states critical to national elections and congressional seats that
might swing power from one side of the aisle to the other.

Ohio is at the forefront of the fight as
activists work to defend long-held voting practices from Republican-led
efforts to limit citizens’ options for casting their ballots.

“It’s troubling that still in this day
and age we have to fight the fight over ballot access,” says Elizabeth
Walters, Ohio Democratic Party executive director, “but sadly we’re used
to it.”

The Ohio Democratic Party’s latest
attempt to ensure that every citizen has an opportunity to vote is the
recently organized Voter Defense Protection Fund and the creation of an
official voter protection director, Lindsay Langholz, to oversee a team
of lawyers and activists monitoring voting access across the state.

“This is a formal way for us to educate
our stakeholders around what we do year in and year out and also a
formalized tool for us to continue to promote this agenda with our
activists and our party folks,” Walters says.

GOP-led efforts to limit voting
opportunities have been well documented in recent years, especially in
Ohio, where Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has repeatedly
attempted to limit early voting hours. Republicans have typically cited a
need for uniformity and fairness across the state’s 88 counties as the
reasoning behind taking away options from counties that use their own
resources to make voting easier.

The Ohio Democratic Party and Democratic
National Committee filed a motion May 1 requesting to maintain early
voting hours during the three days prior to Election Day. A judge in
2012 forced Husted to reinstate the same time period after he attempted
to end the in-person voting period on the Friday before election day
rather than leaving it open through the final weekend and Monday before
polls open.

“The more things change, the more they
stay the same, in violation of the equal protection rights of Ohio’s
voters,” the motion reads.

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“The Ohio General Assembly and Secretary of
State are using the same 2012 playbook for the 2014 elections.”

The ACLU of Ohio also filed a lawsuit May
1 seeking to reinstate an early voting period called “Golden Week” —
the first week of early voting when voters can register to vote and cast
their ballot on the same day. It also asks the court reinstate Sunday
voting, the Monday before Election Day and all evening voting hours.

“Ohio has again taken center stage in the
battle over voting rights,” said Dale Ho, ACLU Voting Rights Project
director, in a statement. “Politicians who tamper with people’s
fundamental right to vote are being put on notice that they are not
going to get away with it.”

Republican Gov. John Kasich in February
signed S.B. 205, which prohibits local boards of elections from their
historical practice of mailing out unsolicited absentee ballots. The
practice is now up to Husted, and he can’t send them out unless the
General Assembly first appropriates funding.

Democrats have long accused Republicans
of purposely limiting options for minority and low-income people — who
tend to vote Democratic — to have their votes counted.

“When you reduce voting hours you make it
harder for working people to vote,” says Walters of the Democratic
Party. “If you’re someone making an hourly wage and the only time you
can get to the ballot is taken away and you’re working a 12-hour shift
or you don’t get paid, that’s a direct hit to voting access.”

Ohio is one of the first states in the
country to organize an on-the-ground presence to monitor local and
statewide legislation that might adversely affect voting access. The
Ohio Voter Defense Fund’s stated mission is to organize attorneys and
build voter education opportunities across the state. The OVDF’s
voter-protection team regularly meets to discuss proposed changes in any
Ohio county board of elections.

“It’s important to know when things
happen so they can’t sneak things in and we’re not finding out when it’s
too late,” Walters says.

Ninety-six thousand Ohioans voted during
the three days prior to Election Day in 2012, accounting for about 16
percent of early in-person ballots. The ACLU in its lawsuit noted that
voters cast 157,000 ballots during Golden Week in 2012, a
disproportionally high percentage of which came from minority,
low-income and single-parent households who have trouble making it to
the polls on a Tuesday. Sunday voting, which Husted eliminated in
February along with evening hours, is particularly popular at black
churches.

“Together these cuts will impact tens of
thousands of low-income voters, elderly voters, student voters and
African-American voters who turn to early in-person voting as their best
option for casting a ballot,” said Sybil Edwards-McNabb, president of
the Ohio Conference of the NAACP, in a statement.

During the 2012 election, a close advisor
to Kasich admitted that support for Husted’s then-new “uniform voting
hours” — which also limited early voting and weekend hours across the
state — was based on the potential to limit black voting, which
typically favors Democrats.

“I guess I really actually feel we
shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read
African-American — voter-turnout machine,” wrote Doug Preisse, chairman
of the Franklin County Republican Party, in an email to The Columbus Dispatch on Aug. 19, 2012.

Hamilton County has recently seen its own
party-line split over a voting access issue. The county Board of
Elections early this year deadlocked 2-2 over whether to move its
offices to a new facility in Mount Airy, where only one bus line runs,
from its downtown headquarters after the 2016 election. Republicans
voted for the move to help consolidate services at the county-owned
facility, while Democrats argued that public transportation limitations
will make it harder for people who don’t have cars to get to the polls.
Husted broke the tie in favor of moving.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, a
Democrat, supports keeping the Board of Elections downtown and in
January offered free space in the city-owned Shillito’s building, but
Republican County Commissioner Greg Hartmann, a Republican, said the
Mount Airy facility wouldn’t have enough occupancy without the Board of
Elections joining other services in the new location.

As state Democrats gear up for a
competitive gubernatorial race between Kasich and Democratic challenger
Ed FitzGerald this year, the party will once again spend considerable
resources just to ensure its supporters have a chance to make their
voices heard.